Police hopeful of solving 50-year-old Beaumont children case

Fifty years ago today, three Beaumont children spent Australia Day at the beach and then vanished on their way home, making their disappearance one of Australia's greatest-ever unsolved mysteries.

Most Australians were not even alive when the children from Somerton Park, in South Australia disappeared, and many witnesses and suspects are now dead.

But Crime Stoppers still receives one call every four days about Jane, 9, Arnna, 7, and Grant, 4. The reward for information about their whereabouts sits at $1 million.

Despite witnesses seeing the three children leaving Glenelg Beach with a man, neither he nor the children have ever been found.

Senior Sergeant David Sheridan is the Adelaide detective now in charge of the Beaumont case. His team is hopeful that despite the case being the longest-running Australian police investigation the fate of the Beaumont children will finally be known.

"The witnesses saw a man lying on a beach towel looking at the children and then later the children talking to this man and playing with him," Senior Sergeant Sheridan told A Current Affair.

Until Australia Day, 1966, little children were considered safe on their own in public places. But the Beaumont children’s vanishing not only destroyed a family, but changed the way Australians parented forever.

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Broadcaster Ray Martin remembers the time the siblings went missing. He was just starting out as a journalist at the time and recalls how it all of a sudden became unsafe for a child growing up in Australia.

"Suddenly everybody was in danger, everybody had a risk. If it could happen in sleepy old Adelaide to the Beaumont children, it could happen in Sydney or anywhere else," he told A Current Affair.

Detective Superintendent Des Bray is the head of Major Crime in South Australia. Last year, he rose to prominence after his team identified the remains of missing two-year-old Khandalyce Pearce inside a suitcase beside a South Australian highway. Khandalyce had been missing for more than seven years.

"There is always a possibility of solving this case but obviously that window is getting smaller and smaller as times passes," he told A Current Affair.

"There is no crime scene, there are no clues, there's nothing to submit for DNA analysis."

"This is a case that won't be solved by technology, it's a case that will be solved by people."

Police have spent the past five decades chasing lead after lead.

When a child killer apparently confessed to murdering the three children, divers searched dams and reservoir walls - finding no sign of them.

In 1966, Dutch clairvoyant Gerard Croiset was flown to Australia to assist police in their investigations.

He claimed the children were buried underneath a warehouse's concrete floor. The building was demolished, but no remains or any evidence were found.

The son of a key suspect, referred to as 'Satin Man' - a known paedophile who lived around the corner from where the Beaumont children disappeared - wrote a book, claiming the children were buried beneath a factory his father once owned.

Two years ago, police excavated the site but, once again, found nothing.

Police are still investigating a number of leads, but refuse to comment on any specific individuals.

For now, Nancy, 88, and Jim Beaumont, 90, can only remain hopeful they will find out the fate of their children.

"I don't believe the children are dead and I'll cling onto hope until there's any evidence otherwise," Mr Beaumont has been quoted as saying.